(Closed) Head Table with Wedding Party or Not?

My fiance and I originally planned to have a head table for ourselves and our wedding party. However, we went to my fiance’s friends wedding this past weekend and they had a table for just the two of them. The wedding party were seated with the other guests. I liked that because my fiance was the best man and I still got to eat dinner with him and hang out with him.

What do you think of a head table vs. a table for two? How are you doing yours? It would be easier for me to keep things the way they are, because I will have to rearrange tables and make new place card holders if I make changes. On the other hand, I want my guests to be happy. I can’t seem to decide what to do. If you were in a wedding party, would you prefer to sit with your guest and or family or would you like to sit at the head table with the bride and groom?

I like head tables both as a B&G and as a member of the wedding party. I think it is nice to be able to be sitting right there next to your very best friends celebrating and talking with them. I personally don’t like sweetheart tables as it always feels to me like the B&G are segregating themselves from all the people who are there to celebrate them and that just doesn’t sit well with me.

We are doing a head table with us, the best man and his wife, MOH/my sister and her fiance and groom’s sister. Then we have a Bridesmaid table with their dates and another Groomsmen table with their dates. I liked the idea of us sitting with our family in the wedding and the others being able to sit with their spouses/significant others.

we just had our wedding and definitely took into consideration our bridal party’s +1’s… we lucked out that only a few of them had bfs/hubbies/wifeys/gfs… so we opted to have their plus ones next to them at the head table… it was a LOT of fun for us to all hang out together and none of the +1’s felt excluded from hanging out with their SO.

I didn’t do either. I didn’t like a sweetheart table because we wanted to talk to everyone, but I didn’t want a long head table either, because then you can only talk to the people on either side of you. I also didn’t want to feel secluded from my guests.

I did two round tables next to each other at the front of the room, with wedding party and dates. My table had me and the husband, my single MOH, single Best Man, a bridesmaid and her date, and a groomsman and his date. Table two had the remaining four bridesmaids/groomsmen and their dates.

we had a regular table for us and some of the wedding party. not all since only 8 sat per table. We sat one half of the party, their dates and friends at a table next to us and another section with us and another section at a different table. It worked out since it’s not like you sit at the table the entire night!

we had our entire wedding party sit with us, and their dates. I agree that it’s not fair to separate them from their dates. We didn’t do a traditional head table, however. We had a banquet table and we all sat around all 4 sides of it, in the middle of all the round guest tables. I loved this set up because it put us in the middle of the party instead of lording over it on a “stage” so to speak. We went to a friend’s wedding once where my husband (BF at the time) was in the wedding. They chose to have all the groomsmen and their dates at one table, bridesmaids and their dates at another, and the couple sat with their parents at a head table. that was a nice arrangement too! I really appreciated being able to sit with him. There have been other threads where people argue that if the date of a wedding party member knows other people at the wedding then they shouldn’t mind sitting apart, but I disagree. I knew plenty of people there but it just doesn’t feel right to eat dinner without the person you came with. And I know others have felt the same way.

I personally do not like head tables with just the WP. We’re not having a head table because we’re eating in a restaurant, hibachi style where each table seats 10 and has a facing table so you kind of get a group of 20 all together. So we’ll have the WP plus all their SO/dates. And if we were having a traditional sit down dinner, we still wouldn’t have a head table. I was at two weddings last month with FH who was in the WP for both and I had to sit through dinner without him and it pretty much sucked!

We had the traditional long table for a head table and it was even at the top of 3 steps! We also did not put the sig others of the wedding party at the head table. Both groomsmen’s sig others were bridesmaids so they sat next to each other. THe other three bridesmaids that had sig others at the wedding, we put the guys with their friends at tables near, but not next to the head table.

We rationalized it this way: 1. we chose our wedding party to be the people closest to us that were able and willing to stand up for us at the wedding and we wanted to show them off. 2. Due to the dreaded Catholic Gap they had already been separated from their sig others for about 4 hours, we didn’t see how another 30 minutes would adversely affect anyone’s ability to enjoy themselves. 3. We knew that no one would stay seated for long! We planned our timeline such that dinner went quickly and there was no reason to sit at the head table any longer than it took to actually eat. 4. Given that the head table was the dividing line between the tables and the bar/dancefloor, we knew that people would constantly be walking by so that no one would feel isolated up at the table. 5. We sat the the sig others with people they knew.

We’re going to try and have all of the wedding party plus dates at our headtable. It will be 14 people, which sounds like a lot to me, but we will make it work! We want to sit with our best friends and I could never separate them from their wives and girlfriends. I’m also considering doing a “sweetheart” in the middle of two tables, like this: OoO that way the table isn’t super long and we don’t have to bend over the table to talk to people.